Oral History Interview, Stephanie Rytilahti (1545)

Abstract

In her 2015 interview, Stephanie Rytilahti speaks about her experiences with Women’s Studies, both as an undergraduate and graduate student. She talks about a class she took in which the students analyzed gender bias in biology research and how she felt as a woman on campus in the early 2000s. She speaks about her campus involvements, particularly her involvement in Promoting Awareness and Victim Empowerment (PAVE) and her job at the Rape Crisis Center, where she became more aware of the issue of sexual assault on campus. She speaks on her challenging but overall enjoyable experience being a TA while being a student in the newly established master’s program in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. She provides insight into various classes she took, notable figures, the department name change which added “Gender” to the title, along with issues the department faced in its early years. She also provides details about her time as a PhD student at Duke and how the program differed from her time at UW, along with touching on childcare and women in the workforce and what feminism means to her. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the Gender and Women’s Studies Class Project of the UW-Archives and Records Management Oral History Collection.